May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The month is about realizing how common mental health issues are, supporting each other through them, and removing the stigma about them. A few statistics: 21% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2020…
Resource for Chronic Pain Sufferers
The American Chronic Pain Association site says the group has been around since 1980, but I hadn’t run across them until yesterday. I spent some time on their site; they have some really good resources and a long list of…
Chronic Pain and Memory
This is a fascinating article with excellent sources. Chronic pain is terrible. A new way of understanding it may help. The past two centuries have produced a cascade of life-altering advances in medicine, yet we have been unable to deal…
Does Anyone Remember Glyph?
I’m not one for video games, really, or games of any sort other than tabletop RPGs. But there was one game that I used to play on my iTouch, Glyph, that I still miss. It was fun and somewhat challenging.…
Pain Stigma
Those of us who suffer chronic pain face a great deal of stigma. This paper addresses that stigma. Pain, objectivity and history: understanding pain stigma
How Chronic Pain Leads to Anxiety and Depression
Neuronal plasticity in chronic pain-induced anxiety revealed Hokkaido University researchers have shown how chronic pain leads to maladaptive anxiety in mice, with implications for treatment of chronic pain-related psychiatric disorders in humans. Chronic pain is persistent and inescapable, and can…
Poem: In Several Colors
In Several Colors by Jane Kenyon From Collected Poems Every morning, cup of coffee in hand, I look out at the mountain. Ordinarily, it’s blue, but today it’s the color of an eggplant. And the sky turns from gray to…
Poem: Myth Dispelled
Myth Dispelled –Adam Possner, M.D. The flu vaccine cannot give you the flu, I tell him. It’s dead virus, there’s nothing alive about it. It can’t make you sick. That’s a myth. But if we bury it in the grassy…
2021 Stitch-a-Long Update
I continue to work on the 2021 Peppermint Purple SAL. I just finished the block for week 29. It’s good to have a second piece to work on while waiting for the blocks of the 2022 SAL!
Poem: For the Bird Singing before Dawn
For the Bird Singing before Dawn –Kim Stafford Some people presume to be hopeful when there is no evidence for hope, to be happy when there is no cause. Let me say now, I’m with them. In deep darkness on…